Naked in Baghdad

by Anne Garrels

  Thanks to Ahmed I hook up with Sa’ad Samarrai, who’s reputed to be one of the better minders, whatever that means. Somewhere around fifty, he’s suave and his English is superb. He’s already working with another journalist, Olivia Ward from Canada. She’s naturally not well pleased that I have elbowed in. We “negotiate” the price. In other words, Sa’ad tells me his services will be $100 a day. Little matter that I am already paying the Information Ministry $50 a day for him.

  The agenda has already been set. We are going out to water- and sewage-treatment plants to see the ongoing effects of the UN sanctions that were imposed after the ’91 Gulf War to exact compliance with UN demands. Crudely put, Iraqi officials blame the sanctions, and the limits on what Iraq can import, for continued health problems. The UN says that if Saddam were to fulfill his obligations the sanctions would be lifted. This trip seems like a good way to get my bearings and see something of Baghdad, and besides, at this point I have no choice. Amer and I get into his black ’91 Chevrolet Caprice. Sa’ad and Olivia take a second car.

  The streets are packed with traffic. Gas is cheap, but nearly all of the cars are old Chevrolets and Fords with broken windshields. Baghdad is not a charming place. The cement buildings are spare, solid, and utilitarian; there’s little vegetation to interrupt the ubiquitous beige and there is virtually nothing left to hint at the city’s exotic past, the Baghdad of a thousand years ago, of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and other stories from The Thousand and One Nights, when the city was the capital of an Islamic empire that stretched from North Africa to the edges of China.

  There are no longer any mysterious souks. The relics of that world were consumed by floods, sandstorms, and Mongol invaders. Four hundred years of Ottoman rule, ending in 1917, left Iraq one of the most backward and underdeveloped regions of the empire. History seems to have begun with the rise of Saddam and his Baath Party in the ’60s, which promised an Arab renaissance, and Saddam’s modernization campaign evidently had no tolerance or taste for quaint. But if Baghdad lacks the architectural intrigue of a Cairo, it also doesn’t have its teeming masses and widespread poverty. It is well laid out, with good roads. There are hospitals, universities, and shopping centers, vestiges of its recent prosperity. There are imposing government complexes built during the oil boom of the ’70s and early ‘80s, and we pass through sprawling middle-class neighborhoods of respectable two-story houses that give the city the feel of the American Southwest. There are no signs of past U.S. bombing campaigns. The government has repaired almost all the bridges and buildings which were hit in ’91 and again in ’98. New construction, however, seems to have been limited to the creation of vast presidential palaces and enormous new mosques. Amer points to one mosque, still bristling with cranes and the skeletons of soaring minarets, which he says will be the biggest in the world. He also nods discreetly at several compounds surrounded by crenellated walls: “Saddam’s palaces,” he says, with barely concealed disgust and no further explanation.

  He gives me a quick primer on conditions. The electricity has been largely restored since the ’91 Gulf War, despite UN sanctions. Blackouts are less common now. Emergency services such as hospitals are operating without life-threatening power cuts, but as we approach the water-treatment plant he says the deteriorating water system is still a major concern.

  Inside the plant, four of eight purification tanks are out of service and a vital sediment filtration machine needs to be replaced. Senior engineer Mohammed Ali Kassim blames the UN sanctions committee for holding up purchase of a new one. The amount of drinking water available to the public is half what it needs. And in rural Iraq the water systems are far worse. Many villages have no access to running water and often depend on brackish wells. All this contributes to endemic gastrointestinal problems and continued high infant-mortality rates.

  In the east of Baghdad, in the slum of al-Hansa, barefoot children play in the fetid streets. There’s no sewage system. In the boiling summer months water pressure is so low that residents say barely a trickle reaches their houses. They have to illegally cut into the pipes to access water. The runoff from the free-flowing sewage then seeps into the punctured water system. According to my notes, the UN now puts Iraq at 127, the bottom of the list, for overall development. It used to rank 67.

  Suddenly there’s the sound of music. A ragtag band wends its way through the streets, the drum and trumpet attracting a raucous crowd. Much to Sa’ad’s horror, we race after them. They stop outside a one-story house. Sa’ad asks some quick questions, establishes what is going on, and agrees that we can go in. The Sadiq family is sitting in a dark, bare room celebrating the return of their father. He was one of the prisoners released yesterday, and everyone is still clearly in shock. He says he’d expected a life sentence for murdering his cousin even though, under customary law, the family had resolved the problem by paying blood money to the family of the victim. He has nothing but good things to say about Saddam Hussein.

  Back in the car, Amer expresses reservations about the prisoner release, given the crime wave that beset Baghdad through much of the 1990s, but he also says many were the victims of an arbitrary system, a poignant statement about the state of Iraqi justice. As we talk, we pass hundreds of people standing silently by the side of the road. “The families of political prisoners,” says Amer, a comment he certainly didn’t need to offer. They are waiting across the street from the General Security Directorate, one of the most feared buildings in Baghdad. I realize we have just tripped on a much more important story than the prisoner release of yesterday. These are people who are looking for prisoners who did not emerge from the cells, and their silent demonstration is unprecedented.

  Amer then gives me a quick lesson on how we are going to work. As long as there are no minders around, he will do what he can “within reason” to help. He warns me to be careful what I say around Sa’ad. When Sa’ad is in the car, I am not to speak to Amer. I am to treat him as nothing more than a dumb driver who follows orders.

  Given this opening, I begin to pepper him with questions. He says he started his professional life as a schoolteacher, but when he could no longer afford the luxury of his job he began to work for foreign journalists as a driver. He has three small children. He rents a house in the western part of the city and has no phone. In recent months the government has taken several steps to bind Iraqis to the regime. Rations have been doubled, cars and stipends have been doled out to party loyalists, tribes, and the military. The prisoner release is a good way to make peace with the military, which has suffered purges, and it is also a way to get more fodder for the army. Many of those in prison were draft-dodgers who will now be “persuaded” to join up and stay. The amnesty may also be a gesture to Iraqis living abroad, who have been invited back, but Amer doubts many will respond, since many of those who have come back in the past have been welcomed with arrest or execution.

  It was much too dangerous for Amer to stop outside the security complex, where the crowds had gathered. I ask him to leave me at the hotel, telling him I have some work to do for a couple of hours. When he has disappeared, I flag a taxi and return on my own. I wander through the mass of people, mostly women draped in black. Without a translator I can only call out, “Does anyone speak English?” No one will speak directly to me, but as I pass by some whisper without raising their eyes, “My son, gone twelve years,” “My husband, eight years,” “Where are they? No one will tell us.” Within seconds, it seems, the police spot me and hustle me away. I deliberately don’t have a tape recorder with me, or a notebook. I try to look as stupid as I can, and they let me leave without further incident.

  Back at the Information Ministry we’re told there’s to be a mass wedding to celebrate Saddam’s recent reelection. At a youth club, more than 150 couples gather for a most unromantic union, but the government is picking up the tab and without this help the couples say they could not afford to get married. The brides, so heavily made up and hairsprayed that they look like they’re
wearing masks, have been provided with long white dresses, veils, shoes, handbags, and gloves. They will be allowed to keep everything but the dresses, which must be returned. Sa’ad is nowhere to be found, and Amer says he cannot translate for me if other minders are present. I find one who speaks one of my known languages—Russian. In fact, it is extraordinary how often Russian is proving to be useful here, as many Iraqis were educated in the former Soviet Union, which had close ties to Saddam’s regime through the ’80s. The same thing happened in Afghanistan, and while reporting in the West Bank I often resorted to Russian when talking to Palestinian doctors, many of whom were trained by the Soviets. And, of course, in Israel, with the huge immigration of Russian Jews or those passing for Jews, Russian is more useful than Hebrew in many neighborhoods. I certainly never expected to use this language as my main means of communication in so many disparate countries.

  OCTOBER 22, 2002

  The silent demonstration of yesterday has turned into a protest march to the Information Ministry. Dozens of Iraqis ignore repeated warnings to disperse and gather outside to demand information on the fate of sons and brothers still missing despite the government’s decision this week to empty its infamous prisons.

  Most are women, swathed in black robes, and most are Shiite Muslims. Though the majority in Iraq, they are underrepresented in a government dominated by Saddam’s clan and loyal Sunni Muslim tribes. The Shiites have their origin in a series of disputes within the early Muslim community, starting more than a thousand years ago, over who was the rightful heir to the prophet Mohammed. Differences in doctrine and practice emerged. The Shiites have suffered repeated reprisals at the hands of Saddam’s ruling Sunni sect, especially after Shiites in the south rose up against Saddam following the ’91 Gulf War and were abandoned to their fate by the United States, which had encouraged them to rebel.

  The women beg foreign journalists to help determine the whereabouts of their relatives. One after another tells how a son or husband was picked up, with no explanation, and has not been heard of for years. These women, however, are no fools. They intersperse their whispered pleas with pro-forma praise of Saddam. Careful not to implicate the great leader, they say, “Of course if he knew our relatives were missing he would help. It’s his subordinates who are to blame.”

  Iraqi officials, used to all demonstrations being officially sanctioned, are clearly stunned at the appearance of the crowd, and they are not deceived by the veneer of support for Saddam. No minders will help translate, so I just record every utterance in the hope I can make sense of it later. A CNN reporter who speaks Arabic balks when I ask her to help. She can’t afford to be seen assisting me. The authorities see Arabic-speakers among the Western press as a potent threat because they can maneuver without minders. Thugs try to block photographers’ cameras. They infiltrate the group shouting pro-government slogans, attempting to turn the demonstration into a full-fledged Saddamfest, but they can’t stop the women from getting their plaintive message across. Finally plainclothes security men carrying weapons appear and shove the crowd away. It’s not clear if any of the demonstrators have been arrested. In the privacy of the car, Amer later helps translate the tape I have recorded.

  Some Western news organizations’ representatives have sat inside the Information Ministry, refraining from covering the event, fearing they could jeopardize their Iraqi visas by documenting a so-called “unauthorized demonstration.” They were right. Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel that broadcasts across the Arab world, had its videotapes confiscated. A CNN correspondent has been expelled after the network carried the protests live. This is one of the few signs of bravery by CNN, which has curried favor with the Iraqi authorities in order to maintain its substantial presence.

  But is maintaining a presence at the cost of not reporting the whole truth worth it? Tonight there was a raging debate among some journalists at the Al-Rashid. One Italian television correspondent told me, “I am here for the big story,” meaning the war. Reporters have long played a regrettable game, tacitly agreeing not to report on aspects of Iraq for the sake of a visa. Among the issues that are forbidden: the personalities of Saddam and his sons; the fact that he is widely despised and feared; the terror that his regime has instilled.

  CNN and the BBC are seen in real time by Iraqi authorities, who monitor the satellite channels normal Iraqis can’t see. This puts a lot of pressure on them to pull their punches and “behave.” Myself, I don’t see the point in self-censorship. The obvious stories, press conferences, and official statements that are now the fodder for most news organizations can easily be had from outside Iraq. I am here to try to understand how Iraqis see themselves, their government, and the world around them.

  OCTOBER 23, 2002

  There are many cultural divides here, most obviously between reporters and Iraqis who are scared to speak out. But there are also divisions between the various journalists who have come from around the world, each with his or her own national perspective. Though friendships cross national boundaries, journalists do tend to hang out with their own. There is, however, another divide, and that’s between print and television. Their demands are different. The way they cover stories is different. And the means at their disposal are distinctly different. Television folk have much more money, relatively large staffs, and big feet, which means they make a lot of noise wherever they go. They seem to live in another realm. As a mere radio correspondent, I fall somewhere in between print and video, and given that I work for National Public Radio, my feet are small.

  While I sit outside in the dusty courtyard, screaming over the sound of traffic down the sat phone to my foreign editor, Loren Jenkins, the networks have comfortable offices with fax machines, round-the-clock access to satellite news, and newswires, not to mention boys who bring glasses of tea. If I sound jealous of certain perks, I am, but I have worked for the networks and have no desire to do so ever again. We were not a good fit. I like being a broadcast reporter, but I revel in the freedom of working alone without a camera crew. I like the intimacy this gives me. People, especially here in a police state, are much more likely to speak openly without a camera shoved in their faces, and because I don’t have to match what I write with video, I can weave the story with words and sound, nuance and all. And I am not relegated to only a couple of fleeting minutes. I figure I have the best of all worlds, a blend of broadcast and print.

  But tonight I’m feeling sorry for myself. The demands by all the NPR programs are enormous. I’m tired and grubby. I have no idea how I’m going to push this story forward, given how frightened everyone is to talk honestly, even without a camera around. All I can do is create a mosaic and hope that a picture emerges that approximates reality.

  I seem to have lucked out with Amer. In every foreign assignment I have ever had, there has always been someone who makes the difference. Every journalist’s secret is her driver or “fixer,” a local person whose translation skills go well beyond words: Lionya and Irina in Moscow, Mimosa in Kosovo, Wadood and Andar in Afghanistan. These people shared every aspect of their lives so that I could better understand their countries. Working around the clock, in tumultuous and dangerous circumstances, they found the people I needed to see, they got me to the places I needed to get to, and they have become my extended family.

  OCTOBER 25, 2002

  I am off to collect string. What I want to do and what I can do are two very different things in Saddam’s Iraq.

  There is growing concern here over a possible war, and it’s taking its toll on the country’s small private sector. Many Iraqis have stopped purchasing anything but necessities. Private businessmen are watching their modest profits plummet.

  Sa’ad takes me to the Nineveh Paint Company, a small family business on the outskirts of Baghdad, which has survived wars, embargoes, and sanctions. I’m foisted on the owner, sixty-one-year-old Bassam Antoon. He has no idea who I am, and I have no idea who he is. We start with basic facts. He has had to cut his staff from
twenty to thirteen, but his employees still make far more than government workers, albeit a modest $15 a week. Antoon laughs readily, but his laughter is tinged with hysteria as he faces yet another challenge, the possibility of another U.S. attack. He says he is tired of trying to keep body and soul alive through so many years of uncertainty.

  When I ask about his biggest concerns, one of his workers replies, “Ulcers brought on by stress.” A devout Muslim, this man indicates he is putting greater and greater faith in God. I am surprised that he doesn’t mention Saddam. The economic crisis following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent UN sanctions all but shut the paint factory down, but after 1997, when Saddam finally agreed to sell oil under UN supervision, the country began to rebuild. Antoon saw his business pick up, but now it’s again in trouble. With the U.S. threat out there, the last thing people are thinking about is repainting their buildings.

  Just getting by here takes creativity, and I need to employ some creativity to get Antoon on his own. Sa’ad is getting bored with all the usual questions and Antoon’s dutiful, careful answers. I ask to see the factory, and Antoon seizes the opportunity to talk to me alone while Sa’ad is busy on the phone clearing permission for the next round of interviews.